


On S'appelle

by DannyAnne



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Happy Ending, M/M, Phone Calls, Post-Inception, drunk phone calls, just a little bit though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-05 20:51:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5389832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DannyAnne/pseuds/DannyAnne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur had concluded that he probably shouldn't even be picking up. Eames could be left to dial another number drunkenly, slur outrageous words to another ear, worry another mind, heart, and soul. That conclusion, however, had been filed away very neatly, very discretely. The realization of his plan to change his cell phone's outdated number could wait another week or two. Because Saturday was a dull night, Tuesday he needed to solidify safety issues, Wednesdays were never fun, and Friday he never even received a call.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Saturday.

**Author's Note:**

> I do commissions! My writing blog is worldoftygers on tumblr! :)

“You’re amazing.”

“Okay, Mr. Eames.”

Arthur’s reply wasn’t an affirmative, wasn’t a write-off. It was a simple acceptance that this was Eames and he was drunk.

His ballpoint pen didn’t make a sound as it came to rest next to the thin red marker he had been using to circle errors in the paperwork.

“You’re really, truly ‘mazing,” Eames was saying, repeating, reiterating. “The way you do…stuff. The plans an’ the paradoxes.”

Arthur was lost in the amazement that Eames could, in his state, pronounce paradoxes better than he could pronounce amazing.

“Have you called with a point in mind?” Arthur asked.

“Tha’s you!” Eames sounded like a grinning child. “Always t’th’ point. Tha’s why we made you Point Man,” he explained solemnly. “Tha’s why you’re amazing.” He paused. “And the hair.”

Arthur very distinctly remembered each and every time Eames had made a point to muss his hair. He wondered briefly if he should be recording this conversation.

“D’you remember our first job together?” Eames’ tone made it sound like he was asking about their first date. That was, in every sense, ridiculous. Arthur had never been on a date with Eames, had never expressed direct interest of such a thing, and certainly was not going to go about asking for dinner now; Eames was too drunk and Arthur wasn’t nearly drunk enough.

“Yes, Mr. Eames,” he answered instead and clicked the pen four times, frowning when he missed a beat and it ended up open.

“Told you that I thought you were th’mark. That Cobb’s’too cheap to gi’me a photog—photograph.”

“I recall quite clearly, Mr. Eames.”

“I had like…five,” Eames admitted between slurred syllables. Arthur didn’t have the heart or mind to inform Eames that he already knew that. He had, after all, immediately confronted Dominic Cobb about the lack of professionalism in such an action, only to be answered with a glare of hardly wounded but surely crackling pride.

“You were j’st _really_ fun t’look at.” Arthur was vaguely aware that any tint of Eames’ unprofessional vulgarity had left to hide somewhere under the snow. He was also very resolutely ignoring this.

Arthur wasn’t sure what kind of drunk he had expected Eames to be. Certainly not an emotional one, maybe an angry one. His skills, though, were purely in paperwork and extensive nights spent digging up unsavory secrets long buried under mud, concrete, and dirty bribes. The actions and mannerisms hidden only by skin and shy awareness were the other man’s specialty. As it turned out, Eames was the talkative type. He was the kind to get everything off his chest and out of his mind in one long, slippery waterfall of fairly heart-breaking confessions, lapping their way over a stuttering vocabulary. Not that Arthur was counting the slipups.

“You _hated_ me,” Eames concluded, drawing out the middle word for unnecessary emphasis. Arthur got the picture.

Arthur didn’t know if he should accept the truth of the statement or deny it in preference to his more recent state of mind. He creased his lips and clicked his pen. “Go to sleep, Mr. Eames.”

There was a slow hum vibrating against his eardrum and Arthur wondered if he was going to get an actual answer or just the breathing that he imagined smelled of gag-worthy alcohol.

“D’you remember that movie?” Eames asked suddenly, quietly; like it was a secret between the two of them. “The one with’e girl and th’guy ad—and th’other guy?” Arthur didn’t feel the need to justify this description with a negative response.

“You know!” Eames insisted after a silent moment. “An’they fall ‘n love an’ shit.” The summary was a far cry from the romantic setting which Arthur was sure the screenwriters of the movie wanted to be conveyed. Still. It was an effort.

“Eames, I really have no idea what you’re talking about.” There was no need to hide the growing smile of amusement that dimpled Arthur's face. The pen had ceased to draw his attention. “About half of the movies produced today are of the exact plotline that you just described.”

“Nononono,” Eames rushed forward. “’S not th’same as others.” He nursed a pregnant pause; the kind of stop in the road that Galileo took before revealing Saturn was, in fact, sporting rings to rival every and any woman’s tiny bands of gold. “Th’ two—two—whatchamacallits…”

“Eames, you really will feel better if you get some sleep. I can get you some medicine for the morning. I’m sure not even you could find a hotel that doesn’t have some Aspirin somewhere in their drawers.”

Eames was already interrupting. “’S really impoter—imporn—import’nt, Arthur. Somethin’ ‘bout a hotel er—or el’vator or – ”

“Goodnight, Mr. Eames.”

Eames’ words had become considerably more broken, had shifted askew and started to slur into vague twists of his tongue. But he did manage to register the farewell said quietly over the line and return his own goodbye. “G’night, da’ling.”


	2. Tuesday.

“Binge drinking is dangerous, Mr. Eames.”

The only reasons Arthur knew that this is what Eames had been doing were A: it was Tuesday and Eames had declared, rather raucously, at a job two years back that “Tuesdays are the days to do it, darling. To get right proper drunk!” and B: answering the phone had led to Eames’ oh so very hushed shooing exclamations of _I wanna be the one t’ tell ‘im I won!_ Arthur had sat through it patiently.

“Y’need s’more fun in your life, Arthur,” Eames advised rather sagely; or as sagely as he could manage with fifteen straight shots clouding his every thought.

“Do you have a ride home?” Arthur asked in sudden thought. _Thought_ , he reiterated in his mind. Not the same thing as _panic_.

Eames seemed to take a moment of thought, taking a pause of _hmmm_ after the question. Arthur felt this was the signal to jump in, but his lie of _I’m only five minutes away_ was stuck resolutely somewhere between the back of his tongue and his churning stomach. Eames had no sense of time when he was drunk (or at all). If Arthur said five minutes, he could arrive two hours later to the greeting of, “you’re always too early, darling.”

Before the pounding muscle in his chest could push the words past his dried lips, Eames gave up on his extended pause. “Riley’s sober ‘nough.”

“Sober enough?” A rustle of movement told Arthur that Eames was nodding. “’Sober enough’ isn’t the same as sober, Mr. Eames.”

“Is so,” Eames argued like a child.

“You’re drunk, Mr. Eames.”

“Obvi’sly.”

Arthur didn’t know what to say next. He could convince Eames to find someone more sober, someone more trustworthy. Or he could make his offer. But the chances were that Eames’ mind would get bored of waiting the two hours it took Arthur to get to the bar he knew the Forger was occupying.

“Arthur.”

Arthur hummed in response, his mind still scattered in other parts, across other planes of thought.

“I remembered th’ name of that movie.”

“And what was it, Eames?”

A pause.

“Forgot.”

Arthur would have rolled his eyes or snorted, but Eames’ voice sounded so genuinely rain-soaked that he held back any smart comments or laughs. Instead he breathed out a response of encouragement. The title couldn’t be that difficult. If he remembered it once, he could surely remember it again. He was clever enough for that.

“S’pose so,” Eames answered in a sunnier tone and Arthur had the sneaking suspicion curling like sunlight over his stomach that Eames was fully aware of the reactions a change of tone could get from the Point Man.

“I can pick you up in about two hours,” Arthur said after a pause, lowering his voice and his words until he was sure they could be brushed off by Eames as background noise that wasn’t important. Arthur thought he could hear the smile in Eames’ words but Eames could shift any part of himself to match up with any mask he chose to wear.

“Riley’s sober ‘nough.”


	3. Wednesday.

They never really talked about What Happened. It was a subject nobody liked breaching. Not even after years of sitting silently among cold stones and empty pathways on the wrong date because Cobb still couldn’t go home. Of course, he always went home. But not _home_.

Arthur was positive the unspoken padlock was still intact on the subject when Eames called, so it was anger that first bubbled behind his eyelids.

“I _know_ , Eames.”

I _know_ you want to talk about it. I _know_ you only hold back for us. I _know_ she’s gone.

“We were going to meet for drinks.”

The slurred words were hardly there, the occasional slips not clear enough to notice. He wasn't drunk, but he was buzzed enough. Arthur wanted to hang up. Arthur wanted to tell him he could meet for drinks with anyone. Arthur _wanted_ to offer to meet Eames for drinks himself. He would need a few after this conversation. The conversation that clearly was not coming to a halt no matter how hard he tried to press on the brakes.

“Knew she was acting diff’rent. Knew something was…”

“Wrong,” Arthur finished.

 _Off, different, broken_.

“Wrong,” Eames repeated.

Arthur heard clinking of ice in glass, heard the quite hum of chatter in the background, heard the harsh words on a speaker somewhere beyond Eames.

“Eames,” he started in a cautionary voice, an offended crack of warning, “are you in an airport?”

 _Public, people, secrets_.

Arthur hated the subject. Hated bringing up What Happened. He’d known Mal. He’d loved her. Just as he loved Cobb, just as he tried to love Eames. But the unforgivable was speaking her name in front of those that didn’t know her. Promising them a glimpse of her smile, of her accent, of her words and never letting her shine past those words that were never enough.

“Australia seems nice this time of year.”

“Australia is hell this time of year,” Arthur responded, changed the subject, hoped for everything to settle in the dust of a departing plane.

“Where’s Cobb?”

“Home, I imagine.”

Cobb was home and Arthur and Eames had taken to leaving country when the date rolled around. They had only ever gone with Cobb for Cobb. Neither was one for mourning. Not the year round kind. Not the kind that didn’t leave the surface of your mind. Not the kind that turned to a sad, romantic smile.

They packed, they left, they shoved it away.

But Eames was stuck and if Eames was stuck, so was Arthur.

“D’you ever go back?”

“You’re far from drunk enough for this, Mr. Eames,” Arthur answered curtly, accusations buried deep in every syllable.

“Christ, Arthur. Don’t you ever stop?”

Arthur didn’t ask for clarification. The words were there and so was the understanding. Not the understanding that fell silent and cut off any teasing words. Not the understanding of I'll get your coffee if you get mine.

 _Running, lying, hiding_.

The _why should I?_ was on the tip of his tongue.

“Of course I do,” he spat instead.

“You’re a terrible liar, darling.”

“You seem to take the lies pretty willingly.”

And there it was.

The possibility that everything surrounding them was a lie spun by a Point Man always on the run. An elaborate mask stitched together by a Forger more comfortable in somebody else’s skin. The idea that the It between them – the only thing with a stroke just as bold and italicized as What Happened – was nothing to either of them, was built on false pretenses and misunderstood actions.

Arthur could hear Eames breathing over the stinging pulse in his ears, wrists, chest. He could hear the buzzing of the airport, the calling of flight numbers. His mind vaguely wondered which one was Eames', how long it would take him to change his flight, change his destination to one Arthur wasn’t aware of. He automatically calculated how long it would take him to find out where Eames really was, how many tense seconds of silence it would take for the ice hanging between them to melt into something warmer than below zero.

The clinking of glass and ice cubes sounded harshly against Arthur’s ears. They dotted out the simple phrase of _I’m not drunk enough for this_.

Arthur realized with uncomfortable chills that neither of them was drunk enough for this. Both of them would likely remember every word. The cold of that realization rubbed him in the same way jamming a needle in his arm to get paid did, the same raking feeling of _I need out_ that exploded across his vision when he dug too deep into a mark’s background.

“Call me when you’re safely sober, Mr. Eames.”

“Will do, Arthur.”

Despite the ice cracking between them, Arthur was convinced of the parting words.


	4. Friday.

He shouldn’t be worrying. He _wasn’t_ worrying. Watching phones wasn’t worrying. It was cautionary examination. It was observation. It was his job.

There was, however, he would admit—very reluctantly—a slight, maybe too-large-for-just-colleagues, hint of concern.

It wasn’t like he expected Eames to call him in a drunk mess for the millionth time. In fact, it was rare to begin with that Eames called him with nothing but dragged out ramblings.

If Arthur was at all worried, it should be with the fact that this phone call—this promised snippet of sober communication that Arthur has taken Eames’ word on—was to be the fourth connection of the week between them. Wasn’t that a sign of depression, a red flag for self-harm or suicide or _something_ that would take Eames away?

Arthur dug a hand through his late morning hair. He wasn’t worrying. He was _panicking_. A full-blown, Arthur style, I’m-not-properly-moving-on-until-this-issue/problem/crisis-is-solved panic.

He had five numbers he could call, one of which was fires of hell off limits. So four numbers and not the vaguest clue of which one was going to work or even if any of them would work.

Usually Arthur had a method involving numbers, had some form of _this goes there_ and _that goes here_ that he could always resort to in situations like this, in cases of missing information. This method had, he thought, been perfected with Eames. And it had been. It truly had been. He was the one that knew Eames had disappeared to the dirtiest part of Hungary when Cobb had lost all contact. He had been the one to drag Eames out of an unlabeled German jail cell even after Eames had been too nervous— _nervous!_ —to remember anyone’s number to call for bail. The problem was that panic left no room for reason or undefined formulas or undefined _anythings_.

It was the promise that was throwing Arthur off, having him making all the wrong circular turns. He couldn’t tell if Eames wanted to be found or if he wanted to be lost. There were several occasions when Eames had disappeared and Arthur could easily recognize the signs of a man that wanted nothing more than to not exist for a month or two.

It was an absolutely unbearable feeling for Arthur to experience. In all the years they had known each other, the one thing Arthur had permanently settled about Eames was that he liked to run. He ran from a million and one things. But Arthur had, in those same years and maybe a little less, ultimately felt like the one million and second thing. The thing that came after the ones Eames ran away from. The thing, God forbid, Eames ran towards.

Arthur went through the list. He went through four voicemail messages, not leaving a single acknowledgement that he had called but waiting out all of the _leave your concerns and I’ll see what I can do_ s. He went through all but one, all but the forbidden one that he wasn’t sure Eames even knew he had. He had typed in three of the numbers and hesitated twice when the phone buzzed and minimized the dial pad to show an incoming call.

“Darling.”

“Eames.” Arthur had to make an effort to keep the absolute relief out of his greeting.

“You called.”

“You didn’t,” Arthur returned.

“You said to call when I was sober,” Eames replied in a voice that set off more red flags than constant contact did.

“Are you drunk now?”

“Pleasantly buzzed.”

It was the sort of lie that Arthur was sure his subconscious didn’t want him to understand.

Arthur took a breath and waited for Eames to say something else. He took another breath when that didn’t happen and tried to think of how to say what he needed to.

He finally settled for, “I’m coming over,” which he knew Eames translated in all of point five seconds.

“I can make it over in a half hour, darling,” Eames said.

||||

The moment Eames walks in the door, Arthur thinks he looks like he’s got the answer to Life placed between his tongue and his teeth. There’s a strain in the air that feels like it’s made up of multiple lines of _ask me about it, ask me about it_. Arthur resolutely ignores this and Eames doesn’t push it, only sips the black coffee and slips into a chair across from Arthur.

“Do you remember that thing I brought up on…” Eames takes a pause from letting the steam of his drink wash over him and tries to find the rest of his sentence in the air around him. “Saturday,” he finally finishes and the sentence has lost its question mark, but Arthur still answers.

“The movie?”

“Yeah, that.” Eames places his mug on a coaster and turns it until it finds its place in his own personal pattern of organization. “I remember more about it now.”

Arthur turns his own mug, which contains tea. He had not expected any apologies. Not for the drunk calls, or the unintentionally caused—he swallows a mouthful of tea and pride—concern, and most certainly not for the conversation about What Happened. Whatever apologies he wasn’t expecting, he also had not expected some miniscule outburst to show up again in a way that somehow felt heavier.

“What did you remember?”

And there must have been something he said right, because Eames is smiling and looking up at Arthur with an honest to God spark in his eyes that Arthur hasn’t seen since before that failed attempt at inception.

“I still can’t remember the title,” Eames admits. “But I do remember what’s important.” There’s some secret joke or code there, some last second flirtation Arthur pretends he doesn’t pick up on. Eames nods this odd sort of acceptance that Arthur tries not to regret.

“It’s about this guy with an identity crisis,”—and Arthur can see the smile, can hear the _get this_ laced in thin layers between the words—“and he convinces himself he’s in love with this girl because that’s what everyone expects of him, or what they’ve told him. There might be amnesia involved, but…”— _they don’t care_ —“The whole time he’s actually in love with this other guy and it’s like he doesn’t _know_ this guy—I mean he really doesn’t know a single damned thing about the man,”—Arthur wonders when they stopped talking about the movie—“But he’s better when he’s with him. Not more defined—nothing can fix that. He just stops feeling like he’s drowning in lives that aren’t his.” Eames sort of pauses without meaning to, like the words are hitched in his throat and refusing to see the light of day, like it’s something he’s used to forcing back down into the deepest parts of him. But he says it anyway. “I can’t remember the title, but I have this feeling that it’s something really brilliant.”

There’s a moment of silence and Arthur sort of wonders if he should ask to kiss Eames. It feels like something he should have permission for. Then again, he thinks when he looks at Eames— _really_ looks at _Eames_ sitting across from him and not in Berlin or Australia or South Africa or an undefined, unmapped paper town somewhere west of nowhere, very much not running away—that nothing about them had ever been executed with verbal blessings, or any sort of blessing at all.

So Arthur moves first and he kisses Eames and Eames takes immediate action to ensure Arthur has no room and no permission to pull away any time soon.

It’s more defined than they’ve ever been and it all feels like some kind of warmth that Arthur has no real memories of ever having felt before. But it’s pleasantly warm and he keeps pushing forward until it feels closer to pleasantly hot and uncomfortably held back.

Then he pulls away before he starts not being able to and Eames hesitantly lets him.

Eames is pursing his lips in a way Arthur isn’t used to seeing, but he’s already halfway to in love with it, so none of it really matters, just like none of It really mattered in the exact way Arthur thought it was supposed to. It mattered in a completely different way and it didn’t need a title. And he thinks that, ridiculously, it took a long line of drunk phone calls to point that out, because drunk phone calls weren’t normal for them, and Arthur wasn’t used to wanting to hang up the phone just long enough to go find Eames and maybe hold him too close, close enough for it to not be normal. But that didn’t matter because none of it was normal. There were no lines, there was not dictionary entry for this shit and it didn’t need a title, because they had the important things.

Eames smiles when Arthur tells him this and they’re both back to not being able to pull away.


End file.
